BeaverTails marks 40 years of deep-fried pastries

Forty years ago, Pam and Grant Hooker hauled their pastry shack to a local fair. The rest is sweet, sticky history.

The Ottawa favourite can now be found across the globe

CBC News · Posted: Jun 30, 2018 3:00 PM ET | Last Updated: June 30

Fourty years ago, Pam and Grant Hooker hauled their pastry shack to a local fair. The rest is sweet, sticky history.

In 1978, Pam and Grant Hooker set up a stall at a community fair to sell their deep-fried pastries, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

It was the beginning of the Ottawa dessert institution BeaverTails.

"You could call it a shack. I think the posts were cedar that had come out of the bush. I pulled the burner out of a propane hot water heater — that was our stove," Grant Hooker told CBC Radio's In Town and Out on Saturday.

"That's where we took our family treat and offered it to the public in exchange, at the time, for 75 cents."

A global expansion

The company, now a global franchise, celebrated its 40th birthday Saturday.

Today the pastries can be found in Japan, South Korea, France, the United Arab Emirates and several other countries and cities across the world.

The original recipe was passed on from Hooker's grandmother, who loved to bake all sorts of pastries and breads.